Tips for First Time Fight Coaches

Every journey should start off with the right expectations and realistic goals in mind. Establish clear and honest goals with your fighter. What does your fighter want to do? Fight for a world title? Experience the excitement of competing? If your fighter is a 15-year old beginner, it’s better not to worry about being world champion and instead focus on doing well, and learning in his/her very first amateur fight. Otherwise, you’re setting up your fighter for a whole world of pain should he or she lose that fight.

The Golf coaching in Melbourne needs to reflect the expectations and goals. If you want to “just do well”, you’ll have to train really hard. If you want “to win”, then you need to be beating up everyone in sparring every single day. After all, fighting is a bit random, right? You show up in the ring and never know who you’re going to face, how well they’re going to do or how well you’re going to do. So your fighter needs to be winning just about every sparring match every single day.

But again, since we’re being more realistic, let’s focus on growth rather than on winning. What did you work on today? What did you learn? What things were you doing now that you weren’t able to do before? What other things could you easily fix that would make a big difference?

I would recommend setting a fight date no more than 3-6 months out. And 3-4 months out is probably better. 6 months may be too long that some fighters lose motivation. Scheduling a fight only 1 or 2 months out may be scary if your fighter isn’t in tip-top fighting shape. 3-4 months out is great because it’s short enough to keep the excitement and motivation going but also long enough to improve a lot.

Now would be a great time to practice your coaching skills. During sparring, ask the fighter to do different things and make adjustments on the fly. This is the ultimate test of coaching skills that can make a huge difference on the day of the fight. Sometimes, there isn’t any time to learn a new concept or work on a new skill. You say what you see, and the fighter needs to be able to adjust to that immediately.

Work on your fighter’s strengths. No more fixing and critiquing. Build confidence in your fighter. HE’S GREAT, HE’S AMAZING, HE’S GONNA WIN! You’ve done all that you can. He’ll always have some bad habits, but he’ll also have some good habits. Give him the confidence to be amazing and feel sure of himself. Very few fighters have NO MISTAKES. It’s more like, they do so well and get so comfortable that their strengths compensate for their mistakes.

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